The Belfast Project, Boston College, and a Sealed Subpoena

The British subpoenas of the Boston College Belfast Project oral history archives is a multifaceted, layered case that involves academic freedom, confidentiality and the protection of sources, right to life issues, and tensions around the application of the 1st and 4th amendments of the US Constitution. It is an example of the recent words of Eric Holder, “the right balance between the interests of law enforcement and freedom of the press”, and how his Department of Justice weighs that balance.

The case has a huge implication on research work across a number of sensitive fields, and raises questions about the ability of governments to abuse the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process in order to pursue political agendas.

The case is a Foreign Policy issue involving the British, Irish, and American governments, the Irish peace process, legacy issues and the Good Friday Agreement, and also raises numerous jurisdictional questions.

This website documents the fight against the subpoenas.

“This was a bona fide academic exercise of considerable intellectual merit.”– Judge William G. Young

The Belfast Project was an oral history of Irish Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries gathered between 2001-2006 and archived in the Burns Library at Boston College.

“[These materials] are of interest – valid academic interests. They’re of interest to the historian, sociologist, the student of religion, the student of youth movements, academics who are interested in insurgency and counterinsurgency, in terrorism and counterterrorism. They’re of interest to those who study the history of religions.”– Judge William G. Young

In 2010, the first interviews from the archive were published in the book Voices from the Grave, and featured in the documentary of the same name. These interviews, with former IRA leader Brendan Hughes and former UVF member David Ervine, were made public upon the death of the interviewees as per their agreement with Boston College.

Former IRA volunteer Dolours Price, while being treated for depression and other aliments, gave an interview to Allison Morris of the Belfast-based Irish News. After strong objections from her family, the newspaper greatly altered the scope of their story. However, two days after its publication, Ciaran Barnes, a colleague of Morris’s at the Sunday Life, a Belfast tabloid, ran with a full spread based on a taped interview he claimed to have heard. Barnes also claimed that Price had “made taped confessions of her role in the abductions to academics at Boston University [sic]“, which was not true.

LEGAL TIMELINE

In March, 2011, the British Government contacted the US Department of Justice to initiate MLAT proceedings which led to the issuing of a sealed subpoena for all materials relating to two interviews in the archive, those of Brendan Hughes and former IRA member Dolours Price. Dolours Price’s interviews were still embargoed under the terms of agreement she had with the Burns Library.

Morris’s and Barnes’s articles were submitted as exhibits by the US Government in their reply to BC’s Motion to Quash. The US Attorney cited Barnes’ article, claiming that he “was permitted to listen to portions of Ms. Price’s Boston College interviews”. This was strongly contested by Boston College in their reply: “That assumption is wrong. Anthony McIntyre, the person who interviewed Dolours Price for the Belfast Project, swears that neither Dolours Price nor any of the others he interviewed for the Belfast Project were provided the tape recordings of their interviews… There is no evidence that Dolours Price has disclosed the tapes of her Belfast Project interviews to anyone.”

In August, 2011, a second subpoena was served seeking “any and all interviews containing information about the abduction and death of Mrs. Jean McConville.”

Following the issuance of the second subpoena, Project Director Ed Moloney and Lead Researcher Anthony McIntyre also sought leave to intervene on their own merits in the “Boston College Tapes” action, in support of Boston College’s Motion to Quash. If successful, they would be granted leave to join the action as plaintiffs, seeking to compel the Attorney General to abide by his obligations under the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. They would ask the Court to order the Attorney General to take cognisance of solemn promises made by the U.K. Government to the U.S. Senate that it would not ‘reopen issues addressed in the Belfast Agreement, or [ ] impede any further efforts to resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland.’

Two and a half years after the MLAT subpoena request for Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price’s archive material was initiated, two years after the second subpoena seeking further material was issued, after a protracted legal battle which went as far as the doors of the Supreme Court of the United States and through two appeals which saw the amount of material ordered handed over drastically reduced and asserted the authority of the Judiciary over the Department of Justice, on Friday, September 13th, 2013 the First Circuit Court of Appeals entered its formal mandate of its May 31 2013, ruling.

The political battle to protect the confidentiality of the archive continues.

SITE MAP

The value of the Oral Tradition is its democracy; it doesn't give to an intellectual elite the exclusive right to shape a communal memory and the collective memory. It makes into a common wealth the story of our shared lives. It's something that we share in common – and it's like a collection plate into which we can all put something: our stories, our myths and the ease with which we are able to, in some way, cross boundaries. - Cleophus Thomas, Jr.

First Circuit Court of Appeals

May, 2013

“… we must forcefully conclude that preserving the judicial power to supervise the enforcement of subpoenas in the context of the present case, guarantees the preservation of a balance of powers… In substance, we rule that the enforcement of subpoenas is an inherent judicial function which, by virtue of the doctrine of separation of powers, cannot be constitutionally divested from the courts of the United States. Nothing in the text of the US-UK MLAT, or its legislative history, has been cited by the government to lead us to conclude that the courts of the United States have been divested of an inherent judicial role that is basic to our function as judges.”

“… the district court acted within its discretion in ordering their production, it abused its discretion in ordering the production of a significant number of interviews that only contain information that is in fact irrelevant to the subject matter of the subpoena.”

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